MES 30, newer one with the water pan that slides in on the left of smoke box. I'm in my one car garage due to rain and sudden gusts of wind. I did my seasoning the other day, didn't babysit it just let it run, used pecan chips. Smelled great soon as I walked out of house, smoke was pretty heavy but instructions had temp at 275. I plan to smoke this weekend so I figured I'd have a few and watch it run once today before I wreck a dinner tomorrow and just buy pizza. So I'm sitting here and the smoke is like almost nothing most of the time, then element kicks on it picks up a bit then back to almost nothing. How thin is the blue smoke supposed to be? How do I tell if the smoke is to heavy? And how do I correct either or? Yes I have checked chip tray after 1 hr and chips are black but most still there only few actually went to ash.

MES 30, newer one with the water pan that slides in on the left of smoke box. I'm in my one car garage due to rain and sudden gusts of wind. I did my seasoning the other day, didn't babysit it just let it run, used pecan chips. Smelled great soon as I walked out of house, smoke was pretty heavy but instructions had temp at 275. I plan to smoke this weekend so I figured I'd have a few and watch it run once today before I wreck a dinner tomorrow and just buy pizza. So I'm sitting here and the smoke is like almost nothing most of the time, then element kicks on it picks up a bit then back to almost nothing. How thin is the blue smoke supposed to be? How do I tell if the smoke is to heavy? And how do I correct either or? Yes I have checked chip tray after 1 hr and chips are black but most still there only few actually went to ash.

CB

Seasoning is an art. I have a gasser that i just throw in some fresh chips and rake the existing black'ened around. It thins my smoke. Just shake the ash out.

Thin blue smoke is almost invisible. There's a saying, "If you can smell the smoke, so can the meat". Or something like that. It just means you don't necessarily need to see smoke all the time. If you can smell it, it's doing it's job.